catster.

i'm not sure how this website escaped me for so long, since i AM a cat lady in training, but one of my awesome customers just mentioned that she was taking pictures of her cats with their new toys for catster.

whoa.

CATSTER!

the eternal internal debate.

last week i was seriously debating adopting another kitten. i go through this every few months. even though i already have two full grown cats that are extremely loud, demanding and hungry, i'm still a sucker for kittens. kittens are the cutest animals in the world, only slightly ahead of baby alpacas. i live in an apartment, so clearly the alpaca is not an option for a pet.

so anyway, i had kitten on the brain.

i even went so far as to start looking for a possible kitten to adopt. now, this is when it gets very hard to turn back. i adopted ziggy and laddie (they are brother and sister) from a shelter as babies. so i visited the same shelter's website to check out the feline situation. so many little kitties, and big kitties, need homes. they are all cute, and i'm the biggest softie ever. i start thinking i should adopt more than one. if i don't, they'll be put down. terrible!

but then i calm down, and revert back to looking for ONE kitten. and i found one. his name is little man, and he is 8 weeks old. he is adorable. I HAD TO HAVE HIM. i start thinking about budgeting in vet costs for the very near future, and considering new names (i was favoring ferdinand de saussure...god knows why) for a baby kitty. i was getting totally stoked. i was getting mixed reactions from friends. some said this was a terrible idea; others supported my continued pathway to crazy cat lady-dom.

and then this weekend happened.

my cats must have sensed i was thinking about bringing in an outsider to encroach on their play and cuddle time. both of them were absolutely terrible all weekend - knocking over drinks, meowing loudly through the night, eating a ton, getting terrible diarrhea, fighting with each other, vomiting and pooping on the floor, and simply ignoring the fact that they had a litterbox at all. it was an all out attack on my sanity.

i'm not getting another kitten. no. way.

candy is killing me.

for years, i didn't eat candy. or sugar at all. or drink sodas. and cooked for myself everyday. i felt so much better than i do now. physically, mentally, and emotionally.

i need to get back to that.

but my original point was: why does there always have to be a mutant piece of candy in a bag, and why do i always unknowingly eat it? you know, the weirdly shaped, funny tasting peanut m&m. the retarded skittle. and so on.

totally just ate a freak m&m. shudder.

sewing machine vs. hand sewing.

i have this amazing sewing machine. it's baby blue in color, and has this great vintage look to it. it's in perfect condition.

i never use it. ever.

a lot of the things i make for etsy, like catnip toys, are just too small to justify dragging the whole thing out. i also do a lot of hand stitched detail that just can't be done with a machine. and some things can ONLY be hand sewn based on the way i want them to look. but mostly, i just LIKE to hand sew things.

a good friend of mine (also an etsian) told me years ago, before i even started my shop and when his was just starting to really boom, that i needed to get over that asap, because productivity is incredibly hampered by my resistance to the machine. i remember going over to his little apartment, sitting on the floor atop a giant pile of random fabrics that he always had strewn about, and showing him this tiny stuffed owl that was the first plush toy i'd ever made. to prove his point, he quickly cut the fabric to make a similar owl and created it with his sewing machine in probably 10 minutes. i sat on his floor and took an hour to complete another of my own. while both owls were cute, i felt that mine had more personality, but maybe that's because i stared at mine for a good 50 minutes longer than he did.

ok, point taken. so i got the machine out. and it sat there looking at me while i continued to hand sew everything.

cut to well over two years later. i opened up my shop for business approximately august of 2009. things started slowly, as things often do, and while i've never been processing incredible amounts of orders, things picked up so much in november and december that i felt overwhelmed, and decided that maybe i WAS slowing myself down by hand sewing everything, even though i liked the process so much more. however, this realization came right in the middle of the christmas rush and i didn't want to start experimenting at that point, since i had way too much to do. i promised myself once that was over, i'd get out the machine and start incorporating it into my crafting.

so now that time has come. things have quieted down, and i have that self-made promise looming over my head. so i suppose the time has arrived for me to suck it up and use my sewing machine.

i'm dragging my heels though.

ramblings from the upstairs room.

well, it would appear that as an etsy shop owner, i must be an active blogger to be at all relevant in the etsy universe. i've been blogging (i.e. complaining, fussing, being hypercritical of everything, mostly myself) since 2005 on good old livejournal, but there is no way that will ever be made public, lest i run the risk of alienating all my friends, offending the general public, and maybe getting myself arrested. i'm kidding.

well, kind of.

anyway. livejournal is a private thing, so i've started this blog to publicly ramble on about the adventures of owning and operating an etsy shop. of course, i'll also use this place as an arena for posting about whatever other random things come to mind, because that's fun too. frankly, this whole blog may dissolve into me talking about music and posting photos of my cats, but that also has it's entertainment value. i promise to refrain from using expletives! for the most part.

so welcome. let the stalking begin!

i mean, welcome to my blog!